by Sundance
A California judge is allowing a black entertainment group led by Byron Allen to continue its lawsuit against McDonalds for not spending enough money on advertising with the network. The lawsuit alleges that McDonalds does not devote enough of its advertising budget to black entertainment, therefore McDonalds is racist.
Byron Allen is suing McDonalds for $10 billion, demanding reparations from the fast food chain for not spending enough advertising with his company.
There is gold under these arches. At first glance, it looks like Al Sharpton’s extortion business model dressed in corporate media suits. It will be interesting to see how this plays out.
Sept 20 (Reuters) – A U.S. judge has ordered McDonald’s Corp to defend itself against a $10 billion lawsuit by media entrepreneur Byron Allen accusing the fast-food chain of “racial stereotyping” by failing to advertising with black-owned media.
In a ruling Friday, U.S. District Judge Fernando Olguin in Los Angeles said Allen could try to prove McDonald’s violated federal and California civil rights laws by finding its chains ineligible for the ” vast majority” of their advertising dollars.
Allen accused McDonald’s of relegating its Entertainment Studios Networks Inc and Weather Channel owner Weather Group LLC to an “African-American level” with a separate advertising agency and a much smaller advertising budget, depriving them of tens of millions of dollars of annual revenue. .
While not commenting on the merits, Olguin cited allegations that Entertainment Studios had repeatedly and unsuccessfully tried since its founding in 2009 to win a contract from McDonald’s, whose “racist” corporate culture hurt Allen.
“Taken together, and construed in the light most favorable to plaintiffs, plaintiffs have alleged sufficient facts to support an inference of intentional discrimination,” Olguin wrote.
In a statement Tuesday, McDonald’s attorney Loretta Lynch maintained that the Chicago-based company viewed the lawsuit as “about income, not race” and believed the evidence would show there was no discrimination.
“Plaintiffs’ baseless allegations ignore both McDonald’s legitimate business reasons for not investing more in its channels and the company’s long-standing business relationships with many other diversely owned partners,” he said. (Read more)
If a black media outlet can sue a corporation for not publicizing its wealth, what precedent would that set?
